Massachusetts is expected to feel some effects from Tropical Storm Hermine. As it stands right now, we should be getting it on Labor Day.
We'll do some forecasting in our next article, but today we want to point out a pair of unique weather milestones that you may see Monday.
1) This is the second Tropical Storm Hermine we've had to deal with. A minimal-strength Tropical Storm Hermine came ashore in New Bedford back in 2004.
and
2) We'll be getting a Holiday Storm.
Green Harbor, MA
Storms are always bad things (although we could use the rain), but they are worse when they fall on a holiday. Plans go awry, travel becomes dangerous, and what should be a festive event instead becomes arduous and perhaps even deadly.
Tropical Storm Hermine may become the storm for Labor Day. "Labor Day Low" is a good and accurate name for it, although it's not really that catchy.
That may be a good thing. As bad as Hermine may be for your golf outings and cookouts, it doesn't look to be a storm that will rank well historically. It will be very much like a nor'easter, especially in terms of duration and intensity. It may not really deserve a cooler name, unless it intensifies or makes a direct landfall.
Duxbury, MA
Hurricane Earl in 2010 just missed being a Labor Day storm, passing on Saturday, September 4th. Earl missed Cape Cod, but still did some damage. One Yarmouth motel had an 85% decrease in rentals, despite dropping their price from $135 to $85.
A blizzard in 1969 struck western Massachusetts on the day after Christmas, but it didn't hit our reading area. We have a few other near-misses, and I don't know dates of other religions well enough to tell you if there was a Passover nor'easter or a Ramadan blizzard.
The longshot chance for a worthy Holiday Storm status application would be if Hermine bopped around just south of us for 3 days. "72 Hours Of Labor" or something like that would be a sweet headline.
You can't have a lame storm holding a holiday name. Every storm I'll be listing below was a Doozy. They wrecked shop, and no one would contest their ownership of a certain day. "The Arbor Day Sunshower" isn't really going to impress future weather historians.
Several storms in Massachusetts history have sort of placed their claim on certain holidays. Hermine is close to staking one for Labor Day, but that is just one of the many holidays that we celebrate in Massachusetts.
Here are a few other notable holiday storms. Blizzards are represented harder than hurricanes because A) winter is longer and B) August, a prime month for summer storms, has no holidays.
Duxbury Beach, MA
The Halloween Gale
This was the worst holiday storm. Technically, the height of it was on Devil's Night. However, nor'easters are the gift that keeps giving, and the Perfect Storm laid into us for 8-10 tides.
She should have been Hurricane Henri, but the National Weather Service felt that naming the storm would have some adverse publicity thing that might endanger someone.
There was no landfall with this hurricane, but it inflicted ridiculous coastal damage onto eastern Massachusetts. I was trapped in a waterfront house on Duxbury Beach for this worst part of this one. If they had the internet back then, I would be YouTube Famous, as waves were breaking on top of the two story house I was in.
It was close as I've come to being killed, and I was, at various points in my life, a bouncer, a night-shift gas station attendant, a guy getting a tour of a nuclear power plant, a graveyard shift night auditor at a drug hotel, a lifelong drug user, a Boston schoolteacher and someone who has A) had a shotgun pointed in his face during an armed robbery, B) had more than one episode in his life where he fought more than one person at once, C) suffered two electrocutions.
The April Fool's Day Blizzard
Sandwich, MA
April snow in Massachusetts isn't that unusual, but 28 inches of it in a day is a bit notable. 1997 gave us that.
This storm also had the coastal flooding component. Winds reached hurricane force along the Massachusetts coast.
I also caught this one from Duxbury. This was before the neighborhood was built up, so i had the only fireplace on my street.... which means that I had a dozen neighbors laying on my floor in front of it once the power went out.
It's also the event where I had an Australian nanny from the neighborhood call me during the height of the storm and ask "When does the Army come and take all the snow away?"
The Groundhog Day Blizzard
There are several contenders for this title, but we'll use the recent one from 2015 because I have pictures of it.
This was very nearly the Super Bowl Blizzard, as it nearly struck on the day that the New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks for the Lombardi Trophy. It came the day after instead, and everyone blamed Punxsatawney Phil.
This could have very easily been the Malcolm Butler Blizzard, as at least one blizzard I can think of (the infamous Lindsay storm, named after a poor-responding NYC mayor) is named for a minor celebrity. Barry White should have had his own blizzard, IMHO.
This was from that winter where it snowed every 3 days and we had a blizzard every Monday. I could probably find the snowfall totals in our archives, but they matter very little. We had meters of snow on the ground before the blizzard, and whatever powder this storm dropped was akin to getting a glass of water and pouring it into a lake.
I wasn't in Pennsylvania for this storm... but if I was,and if that little groundhog stuck his head up out of his little hidey-hole, I would have kicked it.
Ocean Bluff, MA
The Inauguration Day Blizzard
I'm not sure if Abe Lincoln or Will McKinley had snowstorms on the day that they took office, but it is definitely a bad thing if they did. JFK's ascension into the Presidency was marked by a now-ominous snowstorm back in his native state.
"It's like raaaaaaaaaaaaainnnn on your wedding day...."
20 inches of snow fell across Massachusetts, and even JFK got some snow on the ol' Chowderhead down in DC.
The Ash Wednesday Storm
OK, we're pushing it now. I also think that I may be missing a Columbus Day hurricane, an Easter blizzard or a Thanksgiving nor'easter.
Ah, well... maybe some old-timers can help us out in the Comments section.
This was a furious nor'easter that did damage up most of the mid-Atlantic and New England coastline in 1962.
You know you're doing well when your pics are pre-captioned
A quick rich-person house.
We went out on a cloudy day, unfortunately...
One thing that I like bout Chatham is tht it is sort of the End Of America. If you were going to physically kick someone out of America, you'd mot likely do it from Chatham.
Plymouth is living in fear today as police beat the bushes looking for the Butt Naked Bandit!
White Horse Beach was the place to be for fans of nude B&E as a man without pants broke into a pair of homes Sunday night.
A woman woke to find a half-nude man in her living room. She woke up because the man tapped her shoulder. He had also been into the children's room. She was no damsel-in-distress, and witnesses saw her physically pushing the man out of the door.
The man ran away, and witnesses saw him trying to get into another cottage. Police say that he broke into two homes in the neighborhood that night.
This is most likely a guy who got so drunk that he A) lost his pants and B) walked into the wrong home. The alternatives are more ominous, however. No attempts at assault were reported.
Police are urging residents to lock their doors at night, and to be on the lookout for the man.
"Jack The Stripper shouldn't be hard to find," said Plymouth detective Elliot Stabler "He's the nude guy breaking into your house."
"It's funny," said Stabler. "Usually, guys commit the crime, and they're hung after a trial. That's not the case with the Butt Naked Beach Bandit."
Several tropical systems are spinning around in yonder ocean out there. We'll be getting touched by them very soon, perhaps even today on some coasts.
Don't get me wrong. The storm that gets closest to us may miss us by 500 miles, and we may not even get windy. However, even 1000 miles is close enough to have a dangerous effect on our waters.
Here's the tropical line-up, with links to the National Hurricane Center page on each storm:
That picture below (Tropical Depression 9, with Hurricane Gaston sort of photo-bombing in from the right) looks scarier than it should. The green area touching New England shows a 5% chance of tropical storm force winds reaching us, not the forecast chance of a tropical storm making landfall. Tropical storm winds are 35 mph minimum. We can do that standing on our head.
Gaston is way out in the ocean, aimed at the Azores, and won't get any closer to us than he already is. However, he's a whale of a storm, with winds of 85-100 mph. In a vacuum, he would maybe kinda increase waves on SE facing Massachusetts beaches.
TD 8 is off of North Carolina, while TD 9 is forming in the Gulf of Mexico.
They are more worrisome than Gaston. "Worrisome" exists in a zone where the range runs from "pay it no mind at all" through "panic, stomp on small children and elderly who get in your way as you flee." This would be much closer to the former than the latter, score it "keep an eye on the forecasts."
The best case scenario gives us sunny skies and maybe some good tummy-surfing waves as none of the storms come near us. The next level- which I think it most likely- is that one or two storms brush by us closely enough (500 miles) to give us rougher-than-usual surf and rip currents. Mind you, I'm not even expecting any/much rain out of this scenario.
A scenario beyond that involves a tropical storm offshore, but close enough (100-200 miles) to give us a good soaking to go along with rougher surf and rip currents. Depending on how things shake out, this may or may not be how we kick off Labor Day weekend.
The closer the storms get to us, the more the chances of action go up. As near as I can tell, Depression 8, 100 or so miles off of North Carolina as I write this, looks to be the better bet to get involved in a New Englander's life.
The worst case scenario at the moment seems to be two tropical storms flying by us in succession, maybe one rolling over Nantucket and bringing tropical storm conditions to Cape Cod. The South Shore might be out of the loop, or they may get some September surf out of it. The South Coast would get the rough surf for sure, but maybe not the 35 mph winds. The Cape would get it worse.
The whammy in that scenario would be surf. We'd get a week of pounding waves and beach erosion. This is a month and change before Nor'easter season, too.
The storm leaving Africa will barrel-ass across the Atlantic, and we'll worry about her later.
We'll keep you updated, and we're just giving you a heads up for now.
Shot from the cah, not fah from the bahn, in Cahvah.... OK, it's Ryegate Farm in Plympton, but I didn't feel like driving up to Harvard for one stupid cah-in-yahd picture....
Massachusetts is known world-wide for her brutal accents. I don't need to tell you that, you live it.
Our job today will be to examine what makes up the Boston Accent, how far it spreads, where it stops, what stops/changes it, and what it then becomes. We also wish to define lesser-researched terms like "South Shore Accent" and "Cape Cod Accent."
I want to state right here that, although I have Historian credentials, I got into Journalism as a sportswriter, and anything beyond sports-writing greatly involves the chance of my intellect running into a wall. As the causal agent in the intellect/wall encounter, I might not be aware when it happens. If you read an article on quantum physics that Neil DeGrasse Tyson wrote and you disagree with it, he's probably right and you're probably wrong. That might not be the case today when you and I speak about Linguistics.
I should also add that the author is fiercely parochial. I firmly believe that Plymouth, America's longest-running settlement for white people, is home to the true American accent. Once you start heading West and South, this true American accent gets corrupted.
Massachusetts was English territory, and English is the main language here. However, Massachusetts also was an ocean away from England, and we sort of got our own thing going on eventually. Massachusetts has had a lot of immigration, so we now have a lot of English being spoken by non-English people who are taking an earnest crack at it. Throw in the great mixtape of Time, and here we are discussing different local accents.
Remember, if you go by Years, our main dialect is Algonquian. If I remember, I'll call the Wampanoag Language Research people and ask if the more eastern Wampanoag speakers drop their Rs.
Any accent flexed in Massachusetts falls under the broad umbrella of New England English. This is a grouping of 3-10 local accents, depending on who you count. Two super-dialects exist within this grouping:
-Western New England English is spoken in Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, Vermont and northern New Hampshire.
- Eastern New England English (which encompasses the Boston Accent), which was the language of most of New England for much of her White Guy history, is utilized in eastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and coastal Maine.
We'll draw a map for those who got confused by that.
Western New England English, which you might know as Hick Speak or How They Talk In Places With Mountains or Those People Who Use Rs, is first up to bat. It seems to run along the Connecticut River, and was spread by trade.
While grouped in the same general accent, Connecticut and Vermont speak differently, but they are more like each other than they are ("ah") like Boston. The same goes for Western Massachusetts.
Western Massachusetts is sort of a merger zone for the CT and VT versions of the accent, and Merger Zones are a subject we'll revisit soon enough.
As with most things New England, I doubt Connecticut's loyalty. However, the consensus among linguists is that the Mountain Speak hasn't been overridden by the powerful Noo Yawk influence coming from the big city to the SW.
Anyhow, the Syrup States are some other website's problem. My area of concern is east of Connecticut through Cape Cod, and then up the coast to Maine.
BOSTON
Boston is the hahhtland of the Boston Accent, and- by proxy- the North East New England English accent. They are most frequently associated with dropping their R sounds, a habit known as non-rhotic speech. We also use Broad A sounds, which is where my own powerful Boston accent screws up the narrative... I can't imagine in my head what the non-Boston version of the trap-bath split is.
You've heard a zillion actors take a crack at the Boston accent. Cheers was famous for it. Norm made a weak effort at the accent. Sam didn't try at all. Fraser and Diane sort of flex a Brahmin accent, and Carla sounds like she's from the Bronx. Cliff (the actor who played him was from Connecticut) tried hard, overdid it, and sounded very much like a non-drawling Mainer.
Johnny Depp, who can do anything, couldn't do the Boston accent. Jack Nicholson, with a shelf full of Oscars, never even tried to fake one in The Departed. Ben Affleck did the very rare "had the Boston accent, sort of had it altered in acting school, and then had to re-learn it when Boston movies came into vogue" movement. Chief Brody can't do one, even with his Islander wife helping him.
I know from how we market this page that, if you're reading this, you don't need me to explain to you what the Boston accent is.
The most powerful and natural usage of a Boston Accent that I ever heard was when I was installing office furniture in the 1980s with the V Crew, a bunch of Southie guys who took a lot of Valium. While I can't repeat it here, it involved the meanest V Crew guy loudly encouraging a man who he thought might be a black homosexual to go through the crosswalk more quickly. While the racial slur was textbook non-rhoticism, he managed to stretch "queer" out to three syllables without even thinking about using an R sound. I'd write it, but I have no idea how to. It would need an A, a Y and a perhaps several Hs.
There is at least one Facebook page where you have to even SPELL in a Boston Accent.
As far as "where does the accent start to change" part, it may be easier to look at the borders. We already looked at the WNEE accent out west. The Boston accent slams into that once you get out of Worcester.
We'll get to the South Shore and the Cape in a moment, but we first need to do some of that Merger Zone work.
MAINE
There are two Maine accents. The main Maine accent is the inland one, where you ask a guy a question and he answers with an "ayup." That old dude from the Pepperidge Farm commercials rocked this sort of Maine accent. Stephen King, when he speaks instead of writes, also has a strong Maine accent.
They say that the Pepperidge Farm guy (Parker Fennelly, born in the 19th Century) has pretty much what would be a textbook Yankee accent. All of New England sounded like him before the Industrial Revolution. Boston accents, imitating England-English dialects of the 1800s, sprung up 200 years after the Yankee accent. It was all Ahhhhhhhhhhh after that.
When you get too close to Boston, the accent shifts heavily to Massachusetts. Boston-influenced Mainer is the other Maine accent. The Boston accent follows the coast, through parts of New Hampshire, from Cape Cod to southern and central Maine. Maine is where it merges with the other Maine accent.
Inland Maine is heavily influenced by the Vermont accent and even the French accent dropping down from the Great White North.
There's a touch of Maine to the Cape Cod accent, but we'll get to that in a minute.
RHODE ISLAND AND THE SOUTH COAST
Rhodey is an itty-bitty state with a unique position in this discussion. They are the home of the Southeast New England English Accent accent.
In short, Rhode Island has a very New York tinge to their accent. They are non-rhotic, but very distinct from Boston. The second word of "Rhode Island" starts with a "D" when a true Rhode (Island) Scholar is speaking, and is closely related to her neighbor, Lon-Guy-Land.
It is notable in that they are not connected to New York other than through Connecticut, and Connecticut isn't as Noo Yawk-sounding. That's not easy to pull off.
It might have to do with tourists, and definitely is related to Rhodey's healthy Italian population. Italians are able to resist the Boston accent somewhat, but they go under in a second for a Rhode Island accent. Rhode Island is also the top location in America for another Romance language bunch, the Portuguese.
It pushes out of Rhodey onto the South Coast somewhat, but it hits a wall once you get out of her cities. "New Beffuh" was coined by someone having fun with this accent.
Probably the best representative is Peter from The Family Guy, a show that is very up-in-your-face Rhode Island. He sounds like he's from New York, which is OK in Rhode Island. "Plunderdome" Buddy Cianci is was also a known heavyweight among Rhodey accent users.
CAPE COD
You'd be tempted to say "Ted Kennedy" here, but remember that he was born in Dorchester. Cape Cod won him over, but- as a Dorchester kid myself- I can tell you that the Dot never leaves the Rat.
Cape Codders have several factors at work when they speak. This is a key merger zone, and you'll notice that whoever I stole that Accents Map from didn't even try to score Cape Cod.
Whether the Cape Cod accent exists as a distinct entity is subject to some debate. It's a little bit of Maine, a smidgen of New York, a touch of Connecticut, a whiff of Rhode Island, a hint of Florida and a heaping dollop of Boston.
They are at the tail end of the Boston Accent, and it is the main influence on year-round residents. Ask someone from the Cape to say "Yarmouth" or "Barnstable" if you need an example, although I'd recommend doing so once the Summer People leave.
Summer People come from all points of the globe, bringing their accents with them and sometimes staying for 1/3 of the year. This can be very influential, as most Cape towns double in population in the summer. Families in cottage neighborhoods tend to spread out among that neighborhood when the kids get older, meaning that a Brewster neighborhood may have a rather large bloc of people who speak with the same sub-species of a Noo Yawk accent.
Many other Cape Codders are snowbirds, meaning that they have some other strong influence on their speech for 6-10 months a year. This effect is compounded by the fact that so many of our Snowbirds do their thing in Florida. Fortunately, a lot of Florida's snowbird population comes from Massachusetts, so the tinge is weakened somewhat.
In short.. although "cosmopolitan" is not a term normally ascribed to Mashpee, it does technically fit. This is the best explanation I can give you for the differences between Boston and Cape Cod's accents.
The Kennedy clan wield the most famous version of the accent, although there is a heavy Boston influence. People under 40 may or may not know that "Diamond" Joe Quimby, the eternal mayor of Homer Simpson's Springfield, is doing a Kennedy impression. Between Quimby and the Kennedys, the Boston accent is sort of the American Politician accent.
THE SOUTH SHORE
Time changes many things. I sure look worse now than when I was a kid... and I wasn't a good-looking kid, believe me. Time also changes accents.
If you ever read "Cape Cod Folks," which was written about 1860s Southern Plymouth, you'll be amazed at the dialogue. People who live where my Hahvahd Yahd ass does used to talk like drawling ("Becky was mad, and wouldn't speak to teacher, along o' teacher's goin' with Beck's beau.") Maine people. I saw not one dropped R, and the author, a socialite English teacher from New York, would have noticed such a thing.
Like we said earlier, most of New England spoke with the Maine accent right up until it became fashionable in Boston to drop Rs after vowels. It took some time to drift out into the deep suburbs and rural areas.
I'm not old enough to do anything but guess at this, but I'd say that the South Shore started changing when Going To The Beach became a major American leisure activity. The changes accelerated when Route 3 was built, opening up the South Shore as a home for Boston workers.
When busing hit in the 1970s, anyone with money fled Boston. Much of the South Shore was undeveloped, or existed in cottage/cabin form. This changed, and most towns on the South Shore saw their population double from 1950 to 1980... some even doubled from 1970 to 1980.
This influx of Southie/Dorchester/Roxbury/Hyde Park people changed the phonic character of the South Shore. By the 1980s and perhaps long, long before, the South Shore was the second home for the Boston Accent.
There is a possibility that the South Shore may soon out-Boston Accent the actual people from Boston. Boston always has and will continue to draw immigrants, both from America and abroad. They will do so at a rate much, much higher than somewhere insular like Pembroke will. Southie is only 80% white, and is 8% black. Duxbury is 99.4% white. Southie is rapidly gentrifying, while Cohasset doesn't look that much different demographically than it did in 1986. This will change the Boston accent... in Boston.
That's right, folks.... we're really not that far from a day when a mob movie is being shot in Massachusetts, and people from Southie get turned down in casting because they don't sound "Southie"enough for the mob movie. This actually happened once (visually) with Dawson's Creek, a show about Cape Cod that was shot in North Carolina because Cape Cod didn't look Cape Cod enough for the producers). When that day comes, don't be shocked if the set of the gritty urban mob movie looks a lot like a Marshfield High School reunion.
I hunted for the South Shore accent all over those there Internets. I may eventually find what I'm looking for, but the best line I saw came in a so-bad-I-won't-link-to-it "People from California Try To Pronounce New England Town Names" video. Looking at "Scituate," some gnarly dude said "It looks like the degree you get if you study Science Fiction in college."
You may also enjoy this forum where someone moving to the South Shore posted a query as to "Which South Shore Town Do I Move To If I Don't Want My Kids To Get The Boston Accent?" Unfortunately for her, the answer is "Plymouth, 1835."
There are some differences between the coastal South Shore accent and the interior Plymouth County one, but they are minor enough that we won't bother with them unless a fight starts in the comments.
The best simple explanation is that the South Shore Accent is similar to the tourist-altered Cape Cod accent, but every tourist on the South Shore is from Hyde Pahhhhhk.
Please note that there are about 30 or so projected paths for Tropical Storm Fiona showing there. One of them has it striking Cape Cod. That's about a 2-3% chance. It's most likely not going to happen.
In fact, if it did happen, it would happen with a storm that might not be too intense. Most present models have her as a Tropical Depression as she nears Bermuda. She has most likely reached peak intensity.
Still, even a 2% chance of a tropical storm making a landfall in Chatham is enough to make me mention it to the readers. I'm not sounding an alarm, just reminding you that it's time to watch the tropics.
My money has Fiona weakening, then curving out to sea without ever getting near us.
The two storms behind Fiona look like they may be more intense. One is a few days away from the Lesser Antilles, but they're not sure if it will even be organized by then. Another more powerful wave coming off of Africa already looks like a hurricane, but it is just a tropical wave. The latter wave is rolling through an area that is favorable for development.
We have no idea where they'll end up, and we'll worry about them later.
We're fishing for help with an article we're doing on the range of the Boston Accent. Since all of America isn't using the Boston Accent, one must assume that the Boston Accent stops somewhere. If so, where does it happen, and what does it then become?
The Boston Accent is a tricky thing to explain, as is the cutoff point. Sometimes, when I can't word the preamble properly, I just transcribe Cranberry County Magazine staff conversations...
Stephen Bowden: "I moved from Dorchester to Quincy to Duxbury in a span covering about 5 years. When I went to school in Duxbury, I was almost immediately pulled from class and inserted into Speech Therapy, where they attempted to exorcise my Boston accent like it was demonic possession. I spent hours saying words like 'farther' and 'Jimmy Carter' over and over."
Stacey Monponsett: "I moved to Massachusetts from France as a child. I was initially disappointed that I hadn't landed in one of the cowboy regions. When I settled in Boston, I assumed that everyone in the city spoke like The Godfather, and that, once you drove out of the city a few miles, everyone spoke like Andy Griffith. I can recall being very frustrated when I moved into the suburbs and everyone still sounded like the Boston people. I then, having kept my disappointment to myself and not getting the opportunity to be corrected, assumed that you had to go to Western Massachusetts to get a cowboy accent. This delusion lasted until I went to Smith."
Cranberry Jones: "Why don't we stop in Fairhaven for lunch?" Jessica Allen: "I grew up there, You're saying it wrong. It's not 'Fair-haven," it's 'Fuh-haven.'" CJ: "'Fah-haven?'" Jessica: "No, Fuh-haven." CJ: "I grew up 20 miles from you. I can't believe that we differ this much phonetically." Jessica: "Why don't we stop in New Bedford for lunch?" CJ: "New Beffuh!" Jessica: "Never mind. I'm no longer hungry."
Girl From Rural Kentucky At A Bourne Hotel: "Excuse me, Sir... would you talk to my friend for a moment?" Stephen: "What do you want me to say?" Kentucky: (laughs) "Whatever you want..." Stephen: (taking phone) "Hey, how you doin'?" Girl On Phone: "Are you an actor?" Stephen: "No, I'm a reporter." Girl On Phone: "Say 'Harvard isn't that far from Boston Harbor,' please" Stephen: "'Harvard isn't that far from Boston Harbor.'" Girl On Phone: "Well, I'll be dipped..." Girl From Rural Kentucky: (grabbing phone from Stephen) "See? I told you it was real. Y'all owe me twenty dollars, bitch!" Girl On Phone: (heard faintly) "I thought they just made that accent up for movies."
Stacey: "Being a French immigrant to Boston had one benefit.... I was the only one at AOL Sports who was able to say 'Brett Favre' effortlessly. His last name is sort of like how Americans say 'five,' but not really." Abdullah: "Southerners add a syllable, I bet." Stacey: (performs the worst Southern accent ever) "Fav-ruh." Abdullah "All of those 'R' sounds that Boston people drop? They are sent to Texas, and put into words like 'wash.'"
America is a land of great diversity. You can have a Cape Verdean girl hand you Mexican food on the Irish Riviera, or you could French-kiss a Russian escort girl at a Swedish massage parlor... all in Massachusetts. This diversity ranges into Accents, and America must have thousands of them.
Several of these accents stand out. California, holding a coast that is about Georgia to Boston, probably has a thousand other regional accents aside from the Valley Girl one... but not if I just shut my mind to the possibility. Southerners have their own thing going on. Anyone with a TV has probably heard the Noo Yawk accent, and perhaps can even differentiate between it and the Lon-Guy-Land accent.
This differentiation leads into today's theme... Is there a difference between the Boston accent and the Cape Cod accent? If there is, where does it begin to assert itself? Does the South Coast favor one or the other, or do they have their own thing? Where do places like Maine and Rhode Island fit into this?
We're seeking your feedback on the matter. We'd like informed opinions, wild guesses, "I've lived in all three" sort of observations, lines of demarcation, bad jokes/puns, "I'm from here and my wife is from there" Mars/Venus tangents, "I'm from Connecticut and you're all goofy-sounding" disses and whatever else might pop into your head.
Feel free to take advantage of this page's COMMENTS feature, or you can drop some knowledge in the comments section of whatever Facebook group you saw this article in. We won't quote anyone directly, unless they get off a good line. I'll try to chase down a linguistic expert while you're doing that, and we'll see what sort of non-rhotic fun we can have later this week. We thank you in advance for your help.
It just occurred to me that there are 6 billion or so people on the planet, and I am most likely the only one thinking "Where do you find a Boston linguistics expert on an August weekend?"
